While fiscal forecasting and monitoring has its roots in the accountability of governments for the use of public funds in democracies, the Stability and Growth Pact has significantly increased interest in budgetary forecasts in Europe, where they play a key role in the EU multilateral budgetary...

While fiscal forecasting and monitoring has its roots in the accountability of governments for the use of public funds in democracies, the Stability and Growth Pact has significantly increased interest in budgetary forecasts in Europe, where they play a key role in the EU multilateral budgetary...

This paper examines the characteristics and determinants of the deviations between the initial and final figures of the Spanish public budget from 1985 to 2006. Our goal is to evaluate the extent to which initial budgeted figures adhered ex-post to actual fiscal figures, by trying to unveil...

Brunila and Tujula suggest that estimating output gaps using a production function may be preferable in the presence of large structural breaks in the economy. In the Finnish experience, they show that the qualitative conclusions are not overly sensitive to the choice of method (HP filter or...

Fiscal balances have deteriorated quickly in recent years, bringing back to the foreground the question what factors help explain such sharp changes. This paper takes a broad perspective at the issue regarding countries included, the range of explanatory variables tried, and the time-span. The...

Estimates of cyclically-adjusted budget balances, correcting actual government budget balances for business cycle fluctuations, are produced by many institutions. This paper presents an alternative approach for the cyclical adjustment of budget balances. The approach is based on a disaggregated...

This paper presents a survey of methods for assessing fiscal soundness, i.e. the capability of governments to honour their obligations in the short run and in the long run. The need for a comprehensive monitoring of fiscal soundness derives from the risks to economic stability that arise from...